Happy Birthday, C.H. Beck!

If you ever read German legal literature or German statutes, the likelihood is that you did come across C. H. Beck, Germany’s pre-eminent legal publishing house. Earlier this month, C.H. Beck celebrated its 250th birthday. And if you pursued a law degree, you will have spent a fortune on their products.

Myops, the non-mainstream legal journal published by, of course, C.H. Beck, in its September issue has the story behind Schönfelder and all the other loose-leaf collections of German laws that are more than any other C. H. Beck product the publisher’s hall mark.*

A familiy buisness in its sixth generation, C. H. Beck is managed by a pair of brothers, one looking after the legal division, the other leading the substantial non-legal arm of the company.

* Jens Gal, Die Spur der Backsteine, myops 19 (2013), 57.

Frankfurt Conference on Recent Developments in Investment Arbitration, October 24, 2013

On October 24, 2013, the German Institution of Arbitration (DIS) is hosting a half-day conference on “Recent Developments in Investment Arbitration”. The venue is the Frankfurt International Arbitration Center (FIAC) at the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry (see here for the full programme). The conference commences at 9:00 am with an address by the Minister of Justice in the Federal State of Hesse, Jörg Uwe Hahn, ending at noon with a lunch reception. One of the hot topics will of course be the Eureko v. Slovak Republic case, in which the Frankfurt Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) had upheld a BIT arbitration clause and found against the Slovak Republic – the matter is currently pending before the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) – and the approach by the European Union to BIT Arbitration more generally.